You probably know families with a run of talent. History is full of them, in both pure brainery and in hands-on and physical achievements, from sports to art, music to politics.
It makes you wonder. Does talent follow bloodlines?
Father Peter Egeli and daughter Lisa Egeil, a pair of Southern Maryland painters, are just two in a family deeply rooted in the arts.
Peter’s parents, Bjorn Egeli and Lois Baldwin Egeli, were both...

Allison Reisinger plays chords on her violin, tuning as she waits for her call. When it’s time to show her stuff, she steps onto the stage, a picture of confidence and concentration. Faculty judges sit below, pens ready. Allison takes a deep breath and lifts her instrument to her shoulder. Her fingers and bow slyly dance across the strings.
Reisinger, of Annapolis and now a senior in violin performance at the University of Maryland, is again looking ahead. The outcome...

Trumpeter swans returned to Chesapeake Country after many years.
“I have lived at this location on the Chesapeake Bay for 19 years and have never observed trumpeter swans before,” said life-long bird watcher Randy Kiser of Shady Side. “Their sound was unmistakable, so different from the tundras.
“They stayed for about an hour and then moved on,” Kiser said.
He wasn’t alone in his trumpeter sighting...

Among the lives changed September 11, 2001 were my Southern Maryland family’s. Our change was for the better.
“How would you feel if I learned how to play the bagpipes?”
My firefighter husband Bill had never picked up a musical instrument in his life — and he’s starting with the bagpipes?
I blame it on New York. The city fire department has one of the largest and most active pipe and drum bands in the...

Dr. Martin Luther King’s message will see you through any month of the year, as readers young and old will learn in Love Will See You Through. In it, King’s niece, Angela Farris Watkins, draws six principles the civil rights leader followed as he promoted peace and non-violence.
Each core belief is explained with an anecdote from his life, making the book both guide and biography. As African Americans in Montgomery, Alabama, protested bus segregation 50 years ago...

Four commercial fishermen from Maryland’s Eastern Shore have been sentenced in federal court for illegally netting and selling more than 90 tons of rockfish and pocketing almost a half-million dollars in profits over four years.
The watermen used gill nets, particularly effective gear used in the Chesapeake since 1873. Gill nets snare fish by the gills in a mesh that allows the fish’s head to enter while preventing its body from following. Some 300 commercial...

Did you know that only roots less than one inch around are capable of generating new roots from the cut end? Did you know that the cut end of a small root can only grow three new roots at the most?
Roots are not like branches. When you prune away the end of a branch, you stimulate the development of side branches. Root regeneration only occurs at the ends of the cut root.
Root pruning is common in commercial nurseries where large trees are grown in the...

I’d love to tax the rain.
Heavy, trouble-causing rains I’d hit with draining fees. Rains that pour and seep into our lower levels, taxing us with sucking it up with the Shop Vac or a multi-thousand dollar remediation job? I’d punish them the same way storm­water-remediation-fee-averse Marylanders say our state’s most hated tax is punishing them. Bad rains would pay at least as much as the $15, $29, $85 or $170 a year some...

While our bodies are getting used to the hour shift brought about by Daylight Saving Time, Mother Nature is working fast to counter our dark mornings, and within a month day break will come at the same time it did before we switched our clocks.
At no other point in the year do the days grow longer at a faster pace, as we gain more than three minutes of sunlight each day here in the Northern Hemisphere. Since solstice, December 21, we have gained more than an hour of sunlight...

Long synonymous with musical theater excellence, 2nd Star Productions had a brilliant 2013-14 season with Children of Eden nominated for a WATCH Award as Outstanding Musical and Hello Dolly winning a Helen Hayes Award for All-Around Production Excellence.
Now the company is celebrating with a star-studded musical revue.
65 Years of Broadway! The Best Musicals, Abridged is a lively retrospective featuring all the Best Musical Tony Award-winning shows since...